Granola: Disruptive Technology without the Disruption

The message to save energy is everywhere, from the Department of Energy’s push towards a Smart Grid to the

The message to save energy is everywhere, from the Department of Energy’s push towards a Smart Grid to the Department of Defense’s initiatives for energy security, for reasons ranging from climate change and protecting the environment to saving money and stretching resources. Many green initiatives such as alternative means of generating and distributing energy are costly and require additional research and development to be feasible.

While there are numerous ways to cut energy use today, many aren’t willing to make sacrifices or they forget to maintain efficiency measures like turning the lights off when they leave a room. MiserWare brings a unique solution to saving energy through their free software Granola which, despite it’s earthy-crunchy name, is a serious disruptive technology for PCs, enterprises, and data centers.

Both your operating system and computer hardware have numerous energy-saving capabilities that you’re almost definitely not using to the fullest. With Granola, available as a free download for personal use on Windows or Linux or for sale for an enterprise or data center, you can save 15% to 35% of energy while maintaining performance and productivity. That means you can save money, enjoy longer battery life on your laptop, and/or feel good about reducing your carbon footprint without constantly playing with your settings, trying to read on a dim screen, or even noticing a slowdown.

Granola accomplishes this through workload monitoring and machine learning to adapt to your usage patterns, allowing it to better match system capabilities to demand, decreasing them when not fully required and increasing them when needed. Extensive benchmarking has confirmed that Granola provides the same level of performance for document editing, productivity, gaming, and entertainment while creating significant energy savings across the board, up to 18%. It does all of this autonomously, without configuration.

All you need to do is download and install the software, which takes seconds.  Granola has already caught the attention of the media, earning mention in Time Magazine‘s Top 20 Green Tech Ideas in 2010 and PC Magazine‘s Best Free Software of 2011, among others. You can try Granola out for yourself with a free download here.